Searching the Web by Photo and Phone – Goodbye Keywords
June 22nd, 2006
Written By: Adam Sussman
Microsoft’s Research & Development department is investigating better uses for the camera on our cell phone.The first practical thing about this technology that comes to my mind is its use for car shopping. The little buttons on my phone makes it very difficult to surf the net and get information regarding the cars I am currently looking at in a timely manor but with this new technology I should be able to take a photo of any car in the showroom and instantly receive consumer reports and possibly even competitive rates.
Gary Stix, author of “A Farewell to Keywords” in next months Scientific American writes;
A search begins when someone snaps a picture with a cell phone camera – a shot of the Mona Lisa, for instance-and sends the image to an image server via the Web. The server contains training images-copies of photographs gathered from all over the Web, which have been indexed and saved for matching with query images.
After a series of mathematical algorithms and billions of processes take place on thousands of servers (for more info on the system, you will have to read the article) a match is verified, a Web page on which the training image appears and is sent to the user’s cell phone.
